


Moth to the Flame

by MeinongsJungleBook



Series: Black Flame Rising [3]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers: Shattered Glass
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Depression, Dystopias, Falling In Love, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Torture, Injury, Loneliness, Mental Health Issues, Oppression, Other, Relationship Development, Self-Harm, Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, Worldbuilding, lobotomy mention, nerd love, suicidal behaviour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-08-20 13:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20228701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeinongsJungleBook/pseuds/MeinongsJungleBook
Summary: A new arrival on Cybertron sets Starscream's post-war life on a new course.





	Moth to the Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Windscream Week prompt "Shattered Glass".

Her arrival was a welcome distraction. 

Starscream had always thought that once the war finally ended, he would finally be so, so happy. During the conflict he already had things in his life that he was so incredibly grateful for, and he thought that once the horrors and terrors of the war were finally done with, he would be able to appreciate them fully, without the conflict’s shadows of fear and anguish hanging over him. But now that the war was at last at its end, Starscream no longer had these things that he had treasured above anything else, and as much as it shamed him, he knew that he’d preferred the horrific violence and slaughter of the war to his current empty existence.

Peace wasn’t all that peaceful anyway. Even though they were no longer at war, it didn’t mean they weren’t still at each other’s throats. Violence broke out daily, and now it was Starscream’s responsibility to try and smooth over all the unrest. He hated politics, especially now that he had nothing left to stand for. He had been appointed the SiC of the Decepticon movement because he had believed so strongly and utterly in the cause that he seemed like the best fit, even though leadership wasn’t his interest or forte otherwise. Now he didn’t know what to believe in, and he was stuck in a role he had no passion or knack for. He truly wanted to help his people, but he’d always been best at helping by inventing things – that was how he felt useful and fulfilled. Stuck in a politician’s role, he felt more like he was just making things worse.

Each and every day was torture. During the war he’d been subjected to torture on multiple occasions, so he could say with certainty that this was indeed torture, but not like any variety he’d suffered before. If anything, the torture he’d experienced in the past had given him a clear, sharp purpose: _get through this, survive this until they get you out. _But now he was trying to endure a type of torture that had robbed him of all direction and purpose, and while it didn’t have the same sharp, blinding intensity of some of the physically agonising tortures he’d experienced at the hands of the Autobots, it was unbearable in an entirely different way. It was taking such a toll on him that his mind was unraveling, and he now found himself constantly shadowed by a hallucination of one of the very Autobots who had tortured him in the past. At least...he was fairly certain Bumblebee was simply a hallucination brought on by his stress and distress; he really didn’t want to give any proper thought to the spectre’s suggestions to the contrary...

So when the distress beacon cried out to him from the edge of the Cybertronian System, he was glad for the opportunity to focus on anything other than the dank pit of misery his life had become, and the demons that haunted him. The beacon gave him a direction, something to focus on; whoever needed his help, he would do whatever it took to help them. The unknown ship that had signalled its distress contained two occupants who Starscream had assumed to be Cybertronian, but the far more ornamental of the two, Windblade, had corrected him. She told him that she and her ‘serf’ – as she referred to the polished but comparatively plain looking bot that accompanied her – were the last surviving refugees from a long lost Cybertronian colony that was now annihilated. She asked for sanctuary, and was willing to offer their servitude in exchange.

Starscream was both fascinated to hear about the existence of lost Cybertronian colonies – he'd heard stories and rumours of such things, but no confirmation until now – and distraught to hear of their tragic plight. He promptly provided them with asylum on Cybertron, complete with an apartment for two stocked with energon and an account with enough Shanix in it to keep them going while they got settled in. Windblade responded to his offering with an inquiry as to what exactly he expected from them in exchange for such comforts, and he told her that he just wanted them to settle in and find some measure of peace after the trauma they’d endured. She gave him a confused look. 

Starscream was deathly curious to learn more about Windblade’s home colony, but he restrained himself from questioning her about it. He of all people knew how painful it could be to talk about things that were lost and never coming back. He did wonder a lot about what its culture had been like and what Windblade’s place in it had been. There was clearly a power imbalance between her and her serf, Chromia, and it made Starscream very uncomfortable. The way Windblade treated Chromia reminded him far too much of how bots had treated those with so-called ‘disposable’ alt-modes in the hey-day of Functionalism – Windblade seemed to act as though she thought of Chromia as an object to be used at her convenience, as opposed to seeing her as her own person.

If Windblade’s colony did have some kind of caste system, Starscream got the distinct impression that she had been part of the upper echelons. Her optic-catching, ornamental design certainly seemed to suggest as much, as did the air of refinement she had about herself. Beneath her cold composure however, Starscream detected a lick of flame. There was something..._intense _about her – when Starscream watched her (his attention often drawn by her interesting appearance) he found that she appeared to do everything with a great sense of purpose, like every little act was a step towards some grand goal she was driven inexorably towards. It was just something in the way she spoke, the way she carried herself, and in the way she took initiative that gave Starscream the impression that she was brimming with all the direction and confidence that he himself now so sorely lacked.

Windblade was intensely curious about everything around her, which Starscream could completely understand; given how fascinated he had been to learn about the existence of the long-lost colonies, he could only imagine how fascinated she must be to actually be standing on the long-lost home world. After he granted her sanctuary, Windblade spent as much time as Starscream could afford her by his side asking him questions, and Starscream was glad for the distraction she presented from his bleak thoughts. She wanted to learn as much as she could about Cybertron and its history, and when he answered her questions, she absorbed everything he had to say with rapt attention, and he had to admit that he liked that. Given how often people got bored and dismissive when he launched into an impassioned explanation of one of his subjects of interest, he always appreciated it when people took interest and paid attention to what he had to say. However, there were some things that he wasn’t willing to discuss, and when she tried to press him for more details on certain things that he skimmed over, he always found some excuse to dismiss her from his presence for the rest of the day.

Windblade was especially engrossed in anything Starscream had to tell her about the war, being understandably flabbergasted at the breadth of eons it had stretched over and the depth of horror it had reached. Starscream was made further uncomfortable by how her optics glittered with eager fascination as he recounted the worst wartime travesties, but he supposed this was simply a side effect of the fact that she hadn’t had to live it. The one thing that sparked her interest more than Starscream’s war stories was when he revealed that part of Iacon was the Titan Metroplex – her optics flashed with that intensity and she cut in, “You have a Titan? I was an attendant to the Titan of my home world – a Cityspeaker. I’m an expert in Titan anatomy and psychology; this could be how I can repay my debt to you – I can serve you by attending to the needs of your Titan!”

Starscream smiled brightly, “Well that sounds ideal! We don’t have any other Titan experts on Cybertron, and honestly I’m at a loss as how to best meet Metroplex’s needs, so you’d really be doing me a huge favour by helping him.”

Windblade nodded enthusiastically, “I know every way to break a Titan; I can show you exactly what neural connections need to be severed to ensure Metroplex’s complete and utter subservience to you.”

Starscream’s optics widened in horror, “_What?_ You’re talking about _lobotomising _him? I thought you wanted to help him! To heal him!”

Windblade only looked at Starscream with confusion again, and Starscream refused any of her further requests to get a look at Metroplex.

At least until the explosion anyway. They were unable to determine if it was due to disrepair or terrorism, but given the decrepit state of Iacon and the unrest of its citizenry, either were just as likely. What mattered was that the explosion had damaged Metroplex in ways that Starscream wasn’t entirely sure how to fix, and given that he didn’t have a whole lot of other options, he decided to relent and allow Windblade to lend her services, after making it explicitly clear she was meant to be _helping_ Metroplex, not hurting him. When she entered Metroplex’s brain chamber her optics lit up and she launched into a passionate monologue about Titan functionality, and Starscream couldn’t help but feel a little twinge of affinity – he was much the same whenever he talked about his own special interests. He knew how nice it was when someone actually paid attention and showed interest during these moments, so he did his best to drink in what she had to say, and it honestly wasn’t hard – the information she had to share about Titans was genuinely fascinating. He was especially interested by the bit about how the epistemic quantum matrices of the Titan neural-ember link were symmetrically entangled across seven dimensions. 

Windblade got stuck into the task of fixing Metroplex, and after a few months of this Starscream felt a tremor through the city and was alerted that the Titan was showing erratic brain activity. He arrived at the brain chamber to find Windblade passed out on the floor, a port in her head linked to Metroplex’s massive brain module. He had her rushed into medical care, where thankfully she was found to be undamaged, though she’d need a little time to recover as her own erratic brain activity smoothed out. As Starscream stood by her medical slab, she woke up, and it was clear that her mind was still not completely returned to normal as she started to cryptically ramble, “_Resonate beacons calling out in the darkness, a call to a new age. Beloved screams in pain and cries for vengeance in the name of his unwilling sacrifice, and what is that but a call to conquest? Must seize upon the distant and lonesome stars. Reach out saviour, it’s all for you._”

After she regained complete lucidity, she said that her memories during and leading up to the mental interface had been scrambled, so she wasn’t sure why she’d decided to merge with Metroplex. The incident made Starscream slightly more wary, but she’d been doing such a good job fixing Metroplex that he couldn’t justify removing her from that role. He still saw Windblade rather frequently, as she liked to deliver her reports to him directly, and then if he was at all free, she would hang around afterwards to make small talk with him, and continue to ask him questions about Cybertron. Despite the things he found off-putting about Windblade, Starscream had to admit he enjoyed her company. After all, now that the war was over, everyone had been given a second chance, and regardless of whatever questionable or distasteful things Windblade might have done on her old world, that second chance to become something new extended to her as well. And honestly? Starscream just needed someone to talk to. As much as he had once valued having time alone to explore his thoughts, he’d always been the kind of person who was especially prone to loneliness – he would spend long stretches of time engrossed in his work, only to then snap out of his trances with an intense craving for company. He couldn’t talk to his old friends anymore, not properly, not when he knew what subject would inevitably come up, he just couldn’t. That left Windblade as one of the few people he had to turn to.

The more time he spent in her company, the more he came to enjoy said company. She asked him questions about Cybertron, and he provided answers peppered with little factoids that he’d always found particularly interesting. He asked her questions about Titans, and she enthusiastically explained all sorts of fascinating little pieces of Titan trivia to him. He also asked her about Cityspeaking, and tentatively pried into her old life on her lost world, and she willingly revealed some things about the life she’d once led, like how she’d won accolades in their world’s sharpshooter championships. It was clear to him that she was very intelligent, and he found her unique outlook interesting, if a little bit unsettling at times. He realised that he’d come to regard her as a friend; she wasn’t nearly as close to him as he was to the people he’d fought alongside for millions of years, but for all the closeness he had with them, they currently felt very far away, while Windblade’s comparatively easy company was on hand.

“I want to start work on repairing damage to Metroplex's vestibular sensor array,” Windblade told Starscream while giving him one of her reports, “should he ever need to transform, we wouldn’t want him to immediately fall flat on his face.”

“Of course,” Starscream agreed, before the corner of his mouth quirked upwards ever so slightly, “but if all else fails, the building regulations I’ve been drafting should stop him from falling over.”

Windblade looked thoughtful as she considered his words for a few moments, before her expression collapsed into one of confusion, and she asked, “How?”

Starscream’s smile widened, “I’ve included sections to prevent urban sprawl.”

Windblade stared at him in even greater confusion for a second, before something clicked in her mind, and a look of amusement crossed her face as she shook her head, “Such nonsense,” she chuckled. It was certainly a better reaction than the disgusted look the apparition of Bumblebee gave him.

Given that Bumblebee was presumably some twisted manifestation of his subconscious, he had to wonder what exactly his loneliness and deprivation was doing to him and the way he felt about others. Starscream hadn’t really had any interest in interfacing until...until he’d fallen in love with the one bot who he’d ever loved in that way, and his lust had been practically laser-focused on the one he’d adored ever since. Now that the bot he’d loved was...now that was all over, Starscream had presumed that those sorts of feelings would have fizzled out, but if Bumblebee’s presence was to be taken as any indication, it seemed as though some part of him was burning with all sorts perverse lusts. Starscream was drawn to Windblade sure; she was an intelligent conversationalist with a strong personality and a fascinating past (not to mention she was simply aesthetically interesting to look at), but he hadn’t thought that he was interested in her in anything other than an intellectual and companionable way. However, Bumblebee’s depraved comments about her seemed to suggest that on some level his attraction also had an erotic element, that for some reason that he _really _couldn’t comprehend, sometimes involved Chromia as well. 

If the hallucinatory Bumblebee’s comments did indeed represent his hidden desires, then Starscream was baffled by himself; he had absolutely nothing against those who enjoyed causal interface – most Decepticons did – but for him personally, interface without love had never been worth the effort. He certainly liked Windblade, but he definitely didn’t love her (and he barely knew Chromia), so why did he apparently desire her? So very much that had been constant for so long had suddenly changed so drastically, so maybe he’d changed as well. He didn’t know what he wanted anymore – he didn’t know who he was anymore. 

When Starscream was informed that Metroplex was powering up the spacebridge in response to a signal requesting passage, he immediately ordered as many armed guards to fill the lobby as could fit. Metroplex was still an Autobot, and as much as Starscream was committed to getting him repaired, part of him was still very anxious about having his most powerful former(?) enemy restored to full functionality. After all, Metroplex had never explicitly agreed to support their new peace, and for all Starscream knew, he could have been waiting to get well enough to bring an Autobot army through the spacebridge and start the war all over again. 

When the spacebridge opened however, it didn’t spew out an invading army, instead only two gaudily painted figures strolled out; one looked incredibly grimy and was covered in scuff marks, and he left greasy footprints as he walked. The other looked as though she’d had a lot of hasty repairs done to her, to the point where she looked like a patchwork bot. Even from across the room, Starscream could detect a sickly-sweet smell emanating from what he assumed was the grimy one, who surveyed the armed guards surrounding him without any sign of concern, before he offered one of them what looked like a bag of energon candies, “Ah, settle down there my good mech, no need to act so upset, we're all about to become the best of friends! Help yourself to some lollies and we’ll offer you the trip of a lifetime! Now, who runs the show around here?”

“Er, that would be me,” Starscream replied, walking through the parting guards. As he grew closer the sickly-sweet smell grew more over-powering, and Starscream shut-off his olfactory sensors. “I’m Starscream, President of Cybertron.”

The grimy bot gave a theatrical bow, “And what an immense pleasure and privilege it is to meet the President of Cybertron! I never dreamed I'd have such a high honour! Nor did I ever dream the President of Cybertron would cut such a dashing figure, if you don't mind me saying. As for my humble self, I’m Doc Knock Out of Velocitron, and this lovely lass is Moonracer.”

Moonracer bounced enthusiastically, before she gave a theatrical bow of her own, “A pleasure to meet ya, a pleasure to be here, pleasures all round!” she cried happily, throwing hands up in air in flourish.

Starscream returned a courteous bow of his own, before he said, “And a pleasure to meet you, but I have to ask – why did you come here, and what or where is Velocitron exactly?”

“Oh, apologies for us rudely dropping in unannounced, but we perhaps prematurely assumed that after you sent out the signal, you were hoping for and expecting a visit from your dear old brothers and sisters from across the stars,” Knock Out replied.

“Signal?” Starscream answered in confusion.

At that point he felt someone take his arm, and turned to see Windblade trying to pull him aside. He hadn’t even noticed that she’d followed him from his office after they’d received the message about the spacebridge; he’d been too consumed with the prospect of an invasion to focus on anything else. He asked Knock Out and Moonracer to give him a moment before he allowed her to lead him to the edge of the room, where she started to speak, “I think I know what’s happened here. When I merged with Metroplex, his mind overwhelmed mine with data, and I’ve been trying to decipher it since, but now I understand: when he realised that I am a child of a Titan, he tried to reach out to my colony, and in the process he must have sent signals to the other lost Cybertron colonies.” 

That would explain it, and it would also suggest the possibility that more colonies might try and contact them, depending on how many there were out there for Metroplex’s signal to reach. Starscream found this to be an exciting prospect – after all, it had been fascinating to meet Windblade and simply learn that these lost colonies existed in the first place, and now there was an opportunity to actually see some of them. On the other hand, new acquaintances often brought new complications, and sometimes dangers, but if any of these lost colonies they’d inadvertently contacted did prove to be hostile, that just created all the more incentive to form alliances with the friendly ones as soon as possible.

Starscream returned to Knock Out and Moonracer, “Admittedly, that signal wasn’t sent out intentionally, but now that you’re here, I’d be very interested in discussing the possibility of re-opening relations between our worlds.”

Knock Out beamed, “Well that’s simply sublime! You absolutely **must** experience the singular delight of visiting Velocitron! Back at the height of the Cybertronian Empire, Velocitron was _the_ leisure and pleasure capital for any bot with their head screwed on right, or anyway otherwise!. Truly, Velocitron has all you could ever even dream of desiring! Whatever your pleasure may be, whether it be racing, interfacing, spectacle, sensation, shopping, socialising, stories, surgery, circuit boosters, or simply unwinding, or_ any other_ flavour of excitement and delight, Velocitron has it in greater measures than you could possibly ever need to be satiated! Velocitron, the happiest place in the universe! And all of its numinous enchantments are still available for Cybertron to rediscover!”

As Starscream looked at Knock Out and Moonracer, he felt a bit of scepticism towards Knock Out’s claims, but he didn’t let it show, “Well that sounds delightful! I’ll put together an ambassadorial party to visit your world at the earliest convenience.”

The ambassadorial party ended up being Starscream, Windblade, Chromia, and a group of guards. Starscream took Windblade with him because it was likely that the colony was settled with a Titan, as Windblade’s own had been, so if it were still an important member of their society, it might pay to have a Titan expert around. Chromia was with them as Windblade’s aide, while the accompaniment of guards were there should anything go wrong, like the entire thing proving to be a trap. They entered through the spacebridge on Cybertron and exited through the one on Velocitron, which opened out onto a grey landscape cloaked in grey smog, and on the horizon Starscream could see something massive trudging towards them through the haze. As it approached, he realised that it was an entire city, travelling along on caterpillar tracks, bellowing thick clouds of black smoke as it moved. It was quite a sight to see, but as it grew closer, Starscream noticed how sad and dilapidated the city looked. Its buildings were in a very obvious state of disrepair and caked in black grim, while the foundation they rested on and caterpillar tracks that moved them along looked worryingly decrepit themselves. The cities movements weren’t smooth – rather it lurched along, while the buildings trembled slightly, and the closer it got, the more Starscream could hear it making some very unhealthy sounding noises. Clearly Knock Out had oversold Velocitron even more than Starscream had ever suspected. 

“What's that peaking over the horizon like the magnificent, shining dawn? None other than the marvelous, miraculous, sparkling gem that is Ogygia, one our spectacular locomotive cosmopolities! They travel around the wonderful world of Velocitron so that visitors and locals alike have the opportunity to see all the splendiferous sights that cover our heavenly home!” Knock Out exclaimed with a flourish.

They boarded the city, and it all looked even more rundown and miserable from the inside. Starscream could see that it had indeed been a nexus of delights once, but that heyday was clearly very, very far in the past. Shopping malls, nightclubs, amusement parks, stadiums, and resorts covered the city, but it looked as though anyone had stopped taking any proper care of them millennia ago, and whatever glamour they once had was long gone, replaced by rust and decay. While the city was clearly designed to host crowds of hundreds of thousands of bots, now the streets were mostly abandoned and eerie, with a few people wandering here and there, looking aimless. The entire place filled Starscream with a deep sense of misery – the loss and hopelessness that permeated the entire city resonated far too strongly with him. 

Knock Out however was very cheerful as he showed them around the city, talking up everything as though it was still the luxurious spectacle that it had once been. Maybe he was young enough that this was all he had ever known, so to him, everything actually was as amazing as he described it. Or maybe he was so tormented by the loss of what he’d once had that he’d managed to delude himself into believing it had never left him. Part of Starscream wished that he himself was capable of such elaborate feats of self-deception. Knock Out took them up to the city’s observation tower in time to see the city pass by the River of Crystal Dreams, one of Velocitron’s greatest natural wonders, according to Knock Out. When they saw it, it was a thick sludge, choked with trash and what looked like toxic waste.

“Did it...always look like that?” Starscream couldn’t help but ask. He immediately cursed himself for not holding his tongue, but Knock Out seemed unfazed by the question.

“Frequent visitation has added further warmth and character to Velocitron’s greatest sights," he replied chirpily, and Moonracer nodded along in enthusiastic agreement, as she seemed to do with everything he said. “Now that our Titan has let us know that Cybertron wants to re-establish contact with Velocitron, visitors can fill our world with their love once more!”

Windblade had been silent for most of the journey so far, just observing everything they’d passed by with quiet but intense curiosity, but as soon as a Titan was mentioned, she jumped into the conversation, “I’d be very interested to speak with your Titan,” she said.

“Oh yes! Navitas said he wanted to speak to a Cybertronian representative; we’re on the way to intercept with him now!” Knock Out responded enthusiastically.

Navitas also proved to be a moving city, but rather than traversing Velocitron on caterpillar tracks, Navitas moved across the land on eight long, spindly, silver legs, that elevated him up above the smog. When they first met up with him, all they saw were these unnervingly needle-like legs coming down through the black smog and piercing the ground below, as the city delicately strode across the bleak landscape. A shuttle took them up to the city above, and when they got there, Starscream was instantly struck by how immensely better cared for it appeared to be in comparison to the ramshackle Ogygia. Inside the city they were met by gleaming white buildings that were so clean they almost looked clinical. Unlike Ogygia, the bots that populated Navitas all moved with purpose, and Starscream felt as though there was an air of anxiety that permeated the place. 

They were left waiting outside Navitas’s brain chamber for about half an hour before a well-polished bot emerged from inside, who looked at them with a neutral expression, and then gestured to Windblade, “Navitas wishes to speak with the Cityspeaker,” she said in a similarly neutral tone.

Windblade smiled and nodded, “Whatever he desires.”

“Well I’m certainly glad I decided to bring you along, you’re very useful to have around!” Starscream told her encouragingly.

She turned her smile on him, “I’m always available for you to use, however _you _desire,” she said, and Starscream just stared at her, a little flummoxed, as she made her way through the door. 

When she returned, she seemed especially chipper, “Navitas is very interested in reconnecting with Cybertron, and with whatever other lost colonies we can make contact with. I believe I can track the signals Metroplex sent out to whatever spacebridges he may have pinged, so we can initiate contact.”

Knock Out and Moonracer both lit up at her words, “More visitors! Yes! This is excellent, joyful news! We must reconnect with all our lost brothers and sisters at once, so they are no longer deprived all the glorious wonders and delightful pleasures Velocitron has to offer them!”

It was clear to Starscream that Knock Out and Moonracer were desperate to recapture the light they’d lost, whether it was a light they’d experienced themselves, or one they’d only ever known from stories. It was the light of a planet filled with enchanted tourists, captivated by a world crafted to tantalise, excite and delight; the Velocitronians wanted the meaning and identity that providing that delight had granted them once more. Cybertron was a lifeline to these people, a beacon of hope, and Starscream couldn’t bear to deny anyone hope, “We’ll organise negotiations to open up channels between our worlds, and look into making contact with whatever other colonies are out there,” he said, to the Velocitronians’ delight. Cybertron needed help as much as Velocitron did, so maybe they’d be able to help each other get better. Maybe re-establishing contact with Cybertron’s long-lost colonies would also give him a sense of purpose again, Starscream thought. He felt a stirring of hope, but for some reason this sat alongside a slight sense of dread that was curdling in his tanks.

Windblade managed to isolate the signals of the other spacebridges Metroplex had pinged, and shortly afterwards, she and Starscream made an excursion to another colony world. When they stepped out onto the alien world, they were met with an idyllic vista that fused the best of mechanical and organic scenery. Lush organic vegetation curled around gleaming buildings and lined shining streets where organic and mechanical people mingled peacefully. An entourage of this mix of people were gathered around the spacebridge, the air about them a mix of caution and curiosity. 

Starscream put up his hands in a peaceable gesture and introduced them, “I am President Starscream of Cybertron, and I’ve come to reforge the connection between us that had been lost to time. I’m not here to take control of your society against your will, I only wish to extend the offer of a relationship that will benefit us both. If you prefer your isolation, we’ll leave, no further questions asked.”

An excited titter went up from the crowd, as a pair of bots stepped forward, and one of them introduced himself, “I’m Minister Fireshot of Devisiun, and I welcome you to our world. We’d come to think that we’d never make contact with Cybertron again, but now that you’re here we’re eager to make up for lost time. Please follow me to our central hall and we’ll discuss this further.”

Starscream and Windblade obliged, and walked through a clean and bustling city where they witnessed the charming sight of organic and mechanical life cooperating as though it were the most natural thing in the universe. They entered a spacious hall decorated by murals depicting the intertwining of two cultures, and Starscream and Windblade took a seat at a large table across from Fireshot, the bot who accompanied him, another pair of bots, and a pair of organics. 

Fireshot started to explain that their Titan had died when they’d crash landed on this world, and that many of them had been badly injured in the crash. The organic populous of the planet, the Teldembians, had helped them recover as best they could, and despite the Teldembians understanding so little about Cybertronian anatomy and needs, their help had proven indispensable to the colonists’ survival. The colonists’ were keen to pay them back in kind, and from that point on the two species had worked side by side to improve one another's lives, their civilizations becoming ever more closely intertwined until they were more or less integrated. 

Starscream was utterly charmed and uplifted by this story; he was so used to bitter and brutal conflict between mechanicals and organics, that a tale of them working together so well was completely delightful and incredibly encouraging to him. He asked for more details about the two species and the ways they’d evolved together and how their integrated civilisation worked, and was incredibly moved by this proof that Cybertronians could not only coexist peacefully with their organic neighbours, but also cooperate with them for mutual benefit.

“While we have a home here and have no intention of leaving, we would love to open up contact with Cybertron once again, and be a part of something greater,” Fireshot told them. “After all, we were originally stranded here without a choice, with no way to contact Cybertron for help.”

Starscream was feeling more optimistic than he had been in quite some time, and he was keen to sort out an agreement with the Divisens so that they could start working together with the same degree of amicability that the Divisens shared with their organic companions. After they’d sorted out some of the particulars, Fireshot and his partner escorted them back to the spacebridge, and Starscream took the time to admire the city and its mixed citizenry on their way out. However, something else started to become apparent to Starscream as he observed the Devisens – an awful lot of them appeared to have been subjected to empurata. In fact, Fireshot’s companion appeared to have experienced it, although Starscream hadn’t wanted to assume anything; after all, given that the bots of Windblade’s colony had evolved to bleed a different colour, it was possible that what looked like empurata was actually just an evolutionary change. Still, it did look an _awful lot_ like empurata...

Before Starscream could carry on with this train of thought, he happened to spy a vehicular alt-mode transform, and as it did, it split apart to become two separate bots!

“A two-bot combiner!” Starscream exclaimed in wonder at the sight.

“What?” Fireshot asked, as he looked at Starscream in confusion, before a look of realisation crossed his face and he burst into laughter. “I can’t believe none of us thought to mention that!” he cried in disbelief. 

Fireshot then explained the other major feature of their society – thanks to the binary stars they were forged under, they were all born as twins who combined in order to transform. Starscream was utterly fascinated by this – combiners were one of his areas of special interest, and he’d never seen bots who combined to create an alt-mode before, or heard of a binary star system having such an impact of the forging process. He wanted to ask them a trillion questions about it all, and now that they were going to be working together, he’d have the opportunity to ask each and every one. This just got better and better!

“So, you two are twins?” Starscream asked, gesturing at Fireshot and his one-opticed partner as they arrived back at the spacebridge.

“That’s right,” Fireshot confirmed. 

Starscream then realised that in all of the excitement he’d been terribly rude, “I’m so sorry,” he said to the one-opticed bot who had been silent this entire time, “I never got your name.”

The bot’s single optic widened but they gave no other response as Fireshot laughed once more and then spoke, “His name _used_ to be Vanquish, ironically enough. I’m pretty sure he picked it out to make a point to me when we were young, but an aggressively over-confident name wasn’t enough to compensate for his deficiencies. Ah, I guess this is another thing I forgot to explain. You see, when we’re ten cycles old we all fight our twin in a battle of strength and wits to determine which one of us will be the _fortimea_, the dominant one, and which will become the _infirmea_, the submissive one, from that point on. The winner becomes the _fortimea_, of course, and they get to make all the decisions, while the _infirmea_ loses their name, face and hands, since they no longer have any need for an identity of their own.”

Starscream just stared at him in complete shock and horror, before he simply asked, “But _why?_”

Fireshot offered an explanation, “When we arrived the Teldembians taught us about the sanctity of the indivisible whole – the individual soul, or ember in our case, is a vital part our philosophy. When new Devisens were forged as split embers, that was seen as a sickening affront to the sacred indivisibility, and everything almost fell apart for us. But then we realised, we weren’t a single soul being split into two new souls, we were simply the same soul spread over two bodies – one containing the strong part, the other the weak. We have our challenge to determine the strong half, which then becomes the face of the individual, and makes all the decisions, while the other half acts as an extension of the body of the strong half.”

“What if the other bot refuses to submit?” Starscream asked, feeling physically ill. 

“Ah, a lobotomy sorts the trouble twins out,” Fireshot replied causally. “Anyway, I’m really excited to visit Cybertron! _Wow_, what an amazing thought...and soon it will be reality! Oh gosh I’m practically _buzzing! _This is going to be the start of a new, amazing age for Devisiun and I can’t wait! I eagerly await your signal to meet up with everyone at the Convocation! Good luck with the other colonies!”

“...right,” Starscream replied as he nodded numbly. He turned and walked through the spacebridge without another word as Windblade followed on his heels. As soon as they were through and the bridge was closed Starscream simply said, “Delete that coordinate from the registry and block any attempts they make to contact us.”

Windblade’s eyebrows knotted in confusion, “Why?”

Starscream gave her an incredulous look, “_Didn’t you hear what he said?_ That society is abhorrent! _Empurata and slavery for half the population._ And lobotomies for anyone who doesn’t agree! We can’t in any good conscience associate with such a world.”

Windblade gave him a thoughtful look, and then said, “You have a living Titan, and so does Velocitron, while their Titan is dead. If you’re able to get the support of any of the other colonies, you should have more than enough power at your command to conquer them with ease. If you don’t like the way they behave, then force them to behave in the way you see fit. Isn’t that..._kinder_ to the slaves you would be liberating, rather than just abandoning them to their fate?"

Starscream gave her a pained look, “I hate the idea of leaving them there to suffer like that, but we just ended one war, I’m not going to launch us straight into another! Windblade, if I could I would scour the galaxy for every act of injustice and instance of suffering and fix it, but it’s not that easy, I wish it were. So often interfering with the best of intentions just makes things worse. I’m not saying we shouldn’t _try _to improve things, but we have to pick our battles, and right now we need to bring peace and stability to Cybertron, not more war.”

“Well, war is hardly the only path to conquest,” Windblade pointed out, “there are many ways to break a society other than brute force. Subterfuge, manipulation, propaganda, seduction – you can bring down their civilization without firing a shot, but not if you refuse to have any contact with them. If you hate something, you can’t hope to change it by avoiding it.”

Starscream gazed at her silently for a few moments before he gave a sigh, “You’re right. The slaves are in that situation because Cybertron abandoned them when their Titan was lost. As the leader of Cybertron, I have more responsibility to help them than anyone else. I’m not going to lead us into another war, but I have to do _something _to help them, and I’ll be in the best position to do that if we become involved with their world. Thank you Windblade, for reminding me not to flee my responsibilities to others.”

She smiled and gave him a nod, “Anything to serve.”

Starscream was glad that Windblade had given him some kind of idea of how he could deal with the Devisens moving forward, but that didn’t stop him from feeling sick to his tanks when he imagined them taking a seat at the Convocation. 

When Starscream and Windblade arrived on the next colony world, Starscream was expecting the worst. What they found was a vista not unlike Cybertron in terms of the mechanical landscape, without any immediate signs of organic life, although off in the distance Starscream saw mountains that looked as though they were made of rock rather than metal. The spacebridge opened out into a city with architectural features that reminded Starscream vaguely of Crystal City before it had been levelled, and a set of a dozen of what looked to be guards greeted them with weapons raised in caution. 

Before Starscream could say anything, a bot with an avian alt-mode stepped forward from between the guards with a bot with a mammalian alt-mode at her side and said, “We see you’re not an invading army, so that’s a good start. We also see that you appear to originate from Cybertron – that's more ambivalent. I assume you want to speak to our leaders to tell them whatever you’ve come here to say, in which case follow us, and don’t do anything to upset the guards that will be accompanying us.”

Starscream looked at Windblade and gave a small shrug, before they followed the envoy through the city. This time Starscream made the effort to closely observe the city and people for anything unusual that might be a red flag, and the first thing that caught his attention was that everyone appeared to have a beast alt-mode. The second thing that caught his attention was that nobody appeared to be in their alt-mode. They arrived at a big building in the centre of the city and were ushered inside, before they were led into a large room with a long table and a raised dais podium and throne-like chair at the end, where a bot with an arachnid alt-mode sat. They were prompted to each take a seat on one of the relatively modest chairs around the table, where a few other bots were already sat, while the two bots that had led them took seats on either side of the spider-bot. 

“Welcome to the city of Chela, on the planet of Eukaris,” the spider-bot told them. “I am Grand Adjudicator Blackarachnia. If you’ve come from Cybertron in an effort to re-establish contact with us, I wouldn’t get too hopeful, but I will hear you out. If you’ve come here to forcibly re-integrate us into the Cybertronian empire, then let it be clear that we _will_ resist you.”

Starscream held his hands up in a placating gesture, “I’m President Starscream, and this is Windblade, my Cityspeaker. We have come from Cybertron, but I assure you, we’re not going to force you to do anything. If you want nothing to do with us, you’ll never hear from us again, but since you’re willing to hear us out I’ll extend the invitation we came here to give – we’re re-establishing contact with the lost Cybertronian colonies in an effort to create a Convocation of Worlds for the mutual benefit of all involved. This won’t place you under Cybertronian control, instead it will be a matter of setting up trade agreements, establishing pacts of mutual protection, allowing for movement and immigration, and sharing culture and technology for mutual enrichment.” 

Blackarachnia gave a nod of understanding before she said, “Eukaris has been isolationist for millions of years, and I’ll explain why. We don’t use alt-modes on Eukaris – we consider our beast forms to be profane – and as a consequence we’re unable to use our alt-modes to determine our place in society. Instead we’ve developed highly sophisticated predictive algorithms that factor in considerations such as a person’s talents, interests, and circumstances in order to best map their lives out for them in terms of everything from careers to relationships. This is far more thorough and scientific than just having bots enter into careers based on their alt-modes, and produces a far more productive, happier, near perfect society. To re-establish contact with Cybertron would involve having to introduce millions of new factors into our algorithms, which will upset their ability to successfully predict the future and everyone’s role in it. So, I think you can understand why we’d be reluctant to become a part of your Convocation.”

Starscream had mixed feelings about this information – as a scientist he found the idea of using predictive algorithms to organise a society fascinating, and it made much more sense than the logic behind Functionalism, but as a freedom fighter it made him uneasy. Sure, using algorithms to _help _people find careers and relationships that were right for them made a lot of sense, but he felt that they should still have the freedom to explore their options and determine who they wanted to be for themselves. Still...that was what Starscream had done, and look where it had got him. Honestly, having something to tell him who he was and what to do and assign him a purpose in life sounded incredibly appealing at this point. _Megatron would have hated to hear him say anything like that_...but what did it matter what _he_ thought anymore? Did Starscream even know what Megatron would think about _anything _anymore? _Did he ever really know? Did he ever even know him?_

Starscream shook himself and returned to the present, doing his best to focus on something in the now in an effort to see through the haze of distraught emotion that had washed over him. He gazed at the avian and mammalian bots sitting on either side of Blackarachnia and noted that for all the apparent perfection of their society, neither of them looked particularly happy, and Starscream knew enough about misery at this point to be pretty certain when he spotted it, “I do understand Grand Adjudicator, but if I may – wouldn't having more factors to work with allow your algorithms to generate better outcomes for everybody? Surely if there’s more options to work with there will be more positive solutions that can be outputted.”

Windblade chimed in, “Cybertron is far more prosperous than the colony I came from, and being there has opened my life up to far more possibilities were ever available to me before. My life is definitely better for it.”

Windblade’s words were enough to momentarily lift Starscream out of the especially miserable mood he’d worked himself into, and he noticed that what the two of them had to say seemed to have perked up the avian and mammalian, who were now looking at them with interest. 

The avian spoke up, “What's more, Grand Adjudicator, this will be an opportunity to further perfect the algorithms.”

The mammalian followed up, “And of course, the more advanced and perfect the algorithms, the more advanced and perfect our society.”

It was clear that the two of them knew exactly what sorts of arguments to use to appeal to Blackarachnia, who was now looking ponderous, “...I’m not going to sign any agreements, Eukaris isn’t going to suddenly break a policy of isolationism that’s been in place for millions of years just because Cybertron’s decided to reconnect with us out of the blue. _But_, I am willing to send ambassadors to Cybertron to collect some data, which we can use to attempt to augment our algorithms. If that goes well...we’ll consider further talks.”

A moment after Blackarachnia finished speaking, Starscream felt a tremble shake the room. It was subtle at first, but it started to grow more intense, until everything was shaking violently and they were all gripped by a sense of alarm. The Eukarians all looked especially panicked, and before Starscream could ask them if they experienced quakes, or if this was something else, they all seemed to go into violent panic attacks, as they started to shriek and howl and claw at themselves. 

“Wha-? No! I can’t- I won’t- I- I- _AAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE_,” Blackarachnia shrieked as she turned her sharp spider legs in on herself, scratching desperately at her frame, which started to convulse.

All the Eukarians began to experience the same convulsions, as the room went from shaking to shifting, and Windblade cried out a realisation to him, “We’re inside a Titan, and it’s transforming!”

The Titan wasn’t the only thing transforming; Starscream realised that the violent convulsions the Eukarians were experiencing were their desperate attempts not to transform, which ultimately failed. Unused transformation mechanisms shrieked violently and the metal came apart at the seams against the owners’ will, and the Eurakians gave feral screams as something as natural as transforming somehow became a horrific spectacle while they uselessly fought against it, until they were finally locked into their beast modes. As soon as this had occurred, one of the Eukarians pounced at Starscream, their beast form foaming rabidly at the mouth, with eyes full of feral violence. Starscream managed to dodge them, and he cried out to Windblade before he transformed into jet mode. Windblade used her sword to take the fore-legs off another Eukarian who had turned on her, before she transformed as well, and the two of them flew out a hole that had opened up in the top of the room.

As they exited, the avian attempted to give chase, but she was pulled from the sky after the mammalian pounced high enough to catch her and drag her down to the ground, where they started to viciously bite and claw at one another. The skies were swarming with aerial Eukarians now in beast mode, all attacking one another in feral fury. Down below was much the same, with the rest of the Eukarians also transformed and also rabid, all attempting to tear each other limb from limb. Amongst this chaos, the Titan that had formed the centre of the city moments ago finished transforming; while most Titans had a city/ship mode and a bot mode, this Titan evidentially had a city mode and a beast mode, and the massive wings of its imposing avian form filled the sky.

The Titan then spoke, its booming voice full of fury and disdain, “**FILTHY CYBERTRONIANS. MY CHILDREN WILL NOT BE CORRUPTED AFTER I’VE SPENT SO LONG ELEVATING THEM FROM ANIMALISTIC OBSCENITY INTO MONOFORMER PURITY. YOU FOUL STANDARDFORMERS ARE EVEN MORE GROTESQUE THAN THE BEASTS. AT LEAST BEASTS HAVE MINDS, BUT YOU ARE NOTHING BUT MERE THINGS WHO LET YOURSELVES BE USED LIKE THE EMPTY OBJECTS THAT YOU ARE. YOU WILL BE ELIMINATED AS MY CHILDREN ARE REMINDED OF THE DEGENERACY I’VE SAVED THEM FROM**.”

Starscream had no interest in facing a Titan and its army of feral emberlings in battle, and he started to mentally map out a route back to the spacebridge that would bypass as many enemies as possible. But before he could get around to figuring out how they’d actually activate said bridge, Windblade flew past him towards the giant, “I know how to break a Titan,” he heard her growl as she went by.

“Windblade!” Starscream cried after her. He followed on her tail as she weaved and dodged on her way towards the Titan’s head, before she slipped through an opening at the side. 

The opening was the entrance to a tunnel that led into the Titan’s brain chamber, and the moment Windblade entered the chamber, blasters emerged from her jet mode and aimed at the massive brain module at the centre of the room. Before she had the chance to fire however, the plating of the floor beneath her rose up and became a set of tentacles that tried to grab at her. She transformed into robot mode in an effort to squirm from their grasp, but they then managed to grasp her root form and slam it up against the wall. Starscream transformed out of alt-mode himself and cried out to her, before he saw a turret emerge from the ceiling and take aim at her ember. Without a thought he launched himself towards her just before the turret fired, and then felt the white-hot agony of the laser tear through his torso. Starscream was armoured with strong alloys of his own invention, so he managed to completely absorb the blast, successfully shielding Windblade’s ember, but although the laser had missed any of his vital systems, it had still blasted a deep, incredibly painful hole in his frame.

Starscream gritted his teeth in response to the familiar agony, and then manifested blades from his arms to start hacking at the metallic tentacles that held Windblade in place. He heard the turret behind him charging up again, and just before it fired he quickly shifted his body so that the shot hit him in another heavily armoured part of his frame. It hurt even worse this time, and he gave out a choked cry of pain before he gritted his teeth once more and resumed hacking at the tentacles.

Starscream took a third shot through another non-vital system and collapsed over the top of Windblade as the pain and damage started to take a serious toll on him.

“Why are you doing this?” he heard Windblade ask him, her voice soft as a tentacle wrapped tight around her throat constricted her speak synthesiser, but he had no time to ask her why she was asking such a silly question, and he shakily arose to weakly resume his hacking.

He heard the turret start to charge up again, and knew that he was running out of non-vital areas he could take the blast, but then he heard the turret change direction, and from the corner of his optic he saw that some of the flight capable Eukarians had pursued them into the brain chamber. They growled and screeched as lasers and tentacles assaulted them, and Starscream took advantage of the distraction to focus on trying to break Windblade free, while doing his best to ignore the agony of his frame, which was new sporting three sizeable holes.

He heard lasers firing behind him as he hacked at Windblade’s bonds, shot from both the Titan’s defence systems and from the alt-modes of the Eukarians, and he heard the scrapping of claws and teeth and rending of metal. Then the Titan around them gave a violent tremble, and he glanced behind him to see that the brain module had taken what looked to be fatal damage in the crossfire. Starscream could feel the Titan begin to fall, and as it did so the metal tentacles holding Windblade in place shuddered, went slack and then fell away. Windblade stumbled, as the energon flow to her brain module had been restricted by a tentacle, weakening her ability to function, and Starscream tried to support her, but he was weaker still, and they both collapsed. But when it seemed that they were condemned to die in the exploding corpse of a Titan, Starscream felt hands clasp him, and he had the vague sense of being lifted to safety before he blacked out.

Starscream woke up with intense pain wracking his severely damaged frame. A small crowd of Eukarians were standing around him and a couple were kneeling over him, including Blackarachnia, the avian and the mammalian, all of whom had returned to their bot modes and were looking badly scratched up and bleeding. Windblade was also amongst them, looking down at him with a strange expression. 

“You don’t appear to have suffered damage to any vital systems,” the avian told him gently when she saw that he back online, “but your frame still needs extensive repairs. We’ll ensure that you get the worst of your injuries seen to before you’re returned to your world.”

“After this, you’ll understand that we won’t be following you,” said Blackarachnia curtly.

The avian spun to face her, “But Grand Adjudicator, now is a better time than ever to reconnect with Cybertron! Our society has been upended, and our algorithms thrown into chaos! The Titan we thought was sleeping for millions of years was the source of our curse all along, the curse that is finally lifted!”

Blackarachnia scoffed, “It was never a _curse_ Airazor, don’t be absurd. And whatever Chela did to us, it doesn’t matter; we’re not going to suddenly start reducing ourselves down to beasts when its convenient. We’re better than that.”

“But I want to fly again, and be able to appreciate it next time!” one of the Eukarians in the crowd cried out. 

“And I want to be able to explore the depths of ocean while feeling the water against my frame!” another chimed in. 

“But if we allow ourselves to use our beast modes, we’ll start defining ourselves with them, and soon we’ll be enslaved to them!” Blackarachnia protested.

It hurt for Starscream to talk, but he felt that he had to speak up, “My society fought a war for the right not to be defined by our alt-modes, but that doesn’t mean we reject them altogether. We define ourselves by our choices while still enjoying and using our alt-modes, and we have the freedom to change them if we so choose.”

This sent up an excited titter from the crowd, at which point the mammalian took a turn to speak, “Grand Adjudicator, a change has been set into motion that can’t be undone. If things must change, why can’t we make it a change for the better? Having Cybertron as an ally could help us make the most of this change.”

“Don’t think I don’t know why you and Airazor are so desirous of change, Tigatron,” Blackarachnia muttered, before she spoke up for the crowd, “but it’s true. Change is upon us, and we need to consider all the new factors it’s presented us with in order to generate the best outcome. This includes considering negotiations with Cybertron.” 

While Airazor had promised to get Starscream medical attention, the Eukarian hospitals were all filled with bots who had been damaged during the fighting, so it ultimately proved easiest to take him back though the spacebridge to a Cybertronian hospital. He spent a couple of days there recuperating, during which Windblade paid him a visit. She explained that there seemed to be another spacebridge that Metroplex’s signal had pinged, but they couldn’t seem to get a lock on it in order to make contact. Starscream replied that after all the excitement the other colonies had given them, maybe three colonies would be enough. 

Windblade nodded, and then gazed at him silently for a couple of moments, before she said, “You would have died trying to save me. Why?”

Starscream smiled at her softly, “Because you needed to be saved,” he replied simply.

She furrowed her brow, “At the expense of your life? That doesn’t make any sense; how can my life be more valuable to you than your own?”

Starscream wanted to tell her that having her around was one of the few things that made his miserable life anything close to tolerable, but he also didn’t want to burden her with his pain, or invite any questions about it. Still, he wanted her to know that he valued their friendship, “I wouldn’t have wanted to live knowing I didn’t make every effort I could to save you,” he told her.

She gazed at him silently again, before she spoke in an uncertain tone of voice, “...thank you,” she told him, and he got the impression that she wasn’t used to thanking people.

After Starscream was released from hospital, he immediately wished he could just go back. Now that he had the colonies on board, he had to set up the Convocation of Worlds, which involved making all sorts of deals and compromises and handling so much paperwork. Then once the colonists started arriving on Cybertron, he had to deal with all the culture clash and conflict that inevitably stirred up. In fact he managed to land himself back in hospital overnight after he’d had an energon axe through his back while intervening in a street brawl between a gang of Autobots and a group of Eukarians. He’d hoped that bringing the colonies together would grant him some sense of achievement and purpose, but all it did was just give him more stress. He still felt just as miserable, lonely, empty and lost as ever. He just wanted his old life back, but that was impossible. 

As he spiralled downwards, his psyche tried to throw him a lifeline, manifested as his own madness. He’d started talking to his hallucination of Bumblebee, because ‘who’ else could he vent to? In that insanity, he managed to find some strange catharsis. His hallucination encouraged him to be harsh towards the people who gave him grief, and eventually Starscream caved to this encouragement a little and found some brief satisfaction in his own unkind words. With a little help from high grade, he ended up just spilling the emotional deluge of grief and stress and misery to the spectre – all the things that he couldn’t bring himself to say, even to himself, finally came out, and it was a painful but much needed release. His psyche dreamed up some confession for the spectre to echo to him, and for a moment that gave him some illusionary sense of connection. Maybe it was his subconscious’s way of reminding that, for all the misery the Autobots had and were still causing him, they were still ultimately people with their own stories and vulnerabilities, and it was his responsibility to care for them. Whatever hidden lusts Bumblebee represented managed to get some release as well, after Starscream’s hallucinatory self-therapy session somehow morphed into a bizarre erotic fantasy that granted him the first overload he’d had in years. It all helped him hold on for another day, but ultimately his madness was a symptom of the nightmare his life had become, not the cure.

A couple of months after they’d established the Convocation, a strange signal started emanating from the ruins of Kaon, and Starscream and Windblade flew out to investigate it together.

“Was Kaon a living city? Did it have a Titan?” Windblade inquired as they flew.

“No,” Starscream replied, “but it was _so_ full of life. It was the cultural hub of Cybertron once, so incredibly vibrant and beautiful. It was...” _it was where he and Megatron met_. It was where they’d fallen in love. It was where they’d shared some of their most cherished moments together. _It was where they’d dreamed of the future together that Megatron had betrayed_. **No.** No, it wasn’t really like that, it couldn’t be what it appeared to be. _It just couldn’t._ Why had he come to this place? Did he have to face this place – face his past – if he were to have any hope of moving forward into his future? Or did some mad part of him hope that the strange signal, calling out to him from the place that meant more to him than perhaps any other, would answer all the questions that had been driving him into madness for years?

When they arrived at Kaon, Starscream was shocked to find a highly dilapidated, yet nonetheless more or less intact, cityscape of long-abandoned buildings, as opposed to the levelled bomb site he had last seen it as. He was then met with an even more surprising sight – the unmistakable figure of Sentinel Prime, of all bots, standing atop the highest building. 

“That’s...that’s Sentinel Prime!” Starscream exclaimed in shock.

“Who?” Windblade replied.

“He was the leader of Cybertron right before the war broke out,” Starscream explained. “By the time he took power, Cybertron had been led astray by its prior leadership, which was why we were teetering on the brink of war. But Sentinel was different – at first it seemed as though he was going to carry on with the Functionalist policies of his predecessors, but after it became clear how dire things had become, he said that he was going to make changes, and that he was willing to listen to people who had ideas for change. Megatron and Optimus – or rather, Optronix as he was back then – agreed to put aside their differences to unite behind their common desire for change, and appear before Sentinel to petition him for freedom from Functionalism. At least, that’s what we thought was happening, but while Sentinel was genuinely willing to listen, Optronix never intended to talk. He killed Sentinel that day, and he thought that he’d killed Megatron as well. That was the day he became Optimus Prime, and the war truly began.”

“If that truly is Sentinel Prime down there, then it seems Optronix was an even more incompetent killer than he initially seemed,” Windblade commented. 

“Indeed,” Starscream agreed. “_If _that really is Sentinel, then the two of us have a lot of catching up to do.”

Starscream and Windblade transformed back into robot mode as they alighted on the rooftop, and Sentinel greeted Starscream with a nod, “I’m glad to see you’ve survived this long Starscream,” he said, sounding sincere. 

“I’m amazed to see you’ve survived at all!” Starscream told him with just as much honesty. “And I’m also just as glad. Sentinel, I don’t know how much you know about what’s happened between your apparent death and now, but we’re finally trying to build the free society you once presented us with the opportunity to create,” Starscream approached Sentinel cautiously with his open hands held in front of him to indicate that he didn’t have any active weapons, while Windblade followed at his side, and they came to stand in front of Sentinel’s imposing figure. “I stand before you now as Megatron once did, to ask for your help in bringing this new, free world into existence.”

Sentinel peered down at Starscream from behind his battlemask with sad optics and said, “I still desire the free world I once promised to facilitate, the one I wanted to be a part of, but now I know how foolish it ever was to dare to want. Fate will always have its sacrifices.”

Then, without offering any elaboration on his cryptic statement, Sentinel suddenly grabbed Windblade by the face, before his gauntlet detached and rocketed into the sky, dragging the bot it held in its grasp with it, her screams of surprise and outrage muffled by the hand clamped over her face.

Before Starscream even had the chance to react, Sentinel had his remaining hand pressed up against Starscream’s ember, and Starscream found himself paralysed as Sentinel unleashed a frequency that disrupted his ability to command his frame. He knew what this was – it was the beginnings of an ember disruption cycle; when it found his ember frequency his life would be snuffed out in the shutter of an optic. One moment he would be alive, and the next he would be gone.

“I’m sorry Starscream,” Sentinel told him, and once again he sounded sincere, “I always respected your talent and conviction, and I would have been honoured to work by your side, but that is simply not what fate has planned for us. Only one of us was ever going to leave this encounter alive, but maybe it’s for the best. The future ahead is going to be ripe with struggles and suffering, and that’s not something that anyone should have endure without someone on their side, because really, aren’t our friends and allies the only things that truly grant our lives hope and purpose?”

As Starscream felt death approach with Sentinel’s signal cycling ever closer to the frequency of his ember, he realised he didn’t feel any fear. He could hear Bumblebee shrieking at him to try and fight against the paralysis and break free, but even if that were possible, what was the point? Sentinel was right; what hope or purpose did he possibly have anymore? Megatron was gone. All of Starscream’s dreams and hopes for the future had died with him. He couldn’t even live in the past, because Megatron’s last acts had tainted his memories with uncertainty that anything had been what he’d believed it to be. All that was left for him was his loss, loneliness and pain. This was for the best.

Starscream could feel the signal that Sentinel was sending through his frame approaching resonance, and he knew that soon this would all finally be over. But then he heard the scream of metal tearing through the sky, and a moment later the flash of Windblade’s energon blade bisected Sentinel’s frame, cutting through his brain and ember, abruptly snuffing out his signal before it could snuff out Starscream’s ember. 

Windblade ran her fingers along the edge of her soiled blade and then brought her hand up to her face to examine Sentinel’s energon, “What a pathetic excuse for a so-called Prime; he had the opportunity to end me and wasted it on a measly distraction, and he couldn’t even use the time he had me out of the way to dispose of you. You’d think he wanted to die.”

Starscream just stared at her. He’d almost been free of all this. He’d been so ready for it all to just be over. The stress, the pain, the loneliness. But he’d been saved. He should be grateful, shouldn’t he? Glad. That was how these things usually went. Saved for what? To go on living with no purpose and no person to live for?

Windblade gave him a quizzical look that started to slip into an expression of concern, “Are you alright? Did he damage you?” she asked, and reached out and brushed her energon-stained fingers where Sentinel’s hand had been up against his ember.

As she did so, a realisation struck Starscream. He had someone who cared about him. He had someone by his side, helping him. He had someone to talk and laugh along with. He had someone with a sense of direction, who could guide him. _He had someone._

“I’m fine,” he said, raising his hand to hold hers against his ember as he gave her a smile that expressed his newfound thankfulness to be alive. “_Now_ I’m fine.”

For the first time in years, Starscream found his life imbued with a sense of hope and meaning. Rising out of recharge and remembering his wretched situation didn’t fill him with the same degree of crushing despair anymore, instead when he woke up, one of the first things he thought about was Windblade. He thought about Windblade a lot now. He thought about her magnetic intensity, about her charming curiosity, about her intelligence that was on par with his own. He thought about how she’d saved him, and helped him, and advised him, and kept him company. He thought about how she did everything with a sense of purpose, a purpose she could maybe share with him. When he thought about the future, something he could never bear to do before, it was always a future she played a major part in.

When he was in her presence, Starscream felt his ember glow with warmth, and he couldn’t help but drink in every detail of her fascinating frame, focus on the charming cadence of her delightful accent, and hang on every single word she had to say. Whenever he had the chance, he asked her about Titans, and any other subject he’d found her to be passionate about, to watch her light up with that magnificent enthusiasm that made her even more radiantly beautiful than she already was. When he wasn’t in her presence, he took any opportunity he could to talk about her, as he eagerly awaited the chance for them to be together once more.

While he didn’t have any less work, or any easier work, than before, Starscream was starting to find his job easier, now that he had hope to energise and inspire him. His inspiration had been running dry for far too long, but now it was suddenly overflowing again, and despite all his official duties keeping him busy, he just had to channel some of it into a new project of his own. After Windblade’s merge with Metroplex, she’d explained the nature and risks of the mind meld to Starscream, and he’d been alarmed by how Cityspeakers were expected to do something so extremely hazardous. So Starscream decided to design a relativistic neural adapter that would manipulate the orthoplexian flow of quantum data using ultra resistor branes in order to protect any Cityspeaker linking with a Titan from being overwhelmed by the Titan’s mind. It was a bit different from most of the things he’d designed before, and he relished the opportunity to work on something new, especially in an area that Windblade was so passionate about.

Almost everything was just a little bit better now, or at least easier to deal with. Even his hallucinatory companion wasn’t as cruel as he had once been, in fact, after Starscream had almost died at Sentinel’s hand, Bumblebee had seemed downright concerned for him. _Fussy _even. So that was nice, in its own, very strange way, but unfortunately it didn’t last. His hallucination’s hostility steadily started to return, but it wasn’t quite the same as it was before; now Bumblebee seemed to lash out at him out of angry frustration, rather than sadistic glee. Funnily enough, now that Starscream had developed strong feelings for Windblade, Bumblebee’s lewd intimations about her had stopped, in fact he got especially annoyed whenever Starscream brought her up at all, which was a lot. Maybe Bumblebee didn’t represent the parts of his psyche that Starscream had thought, but he was at a loss to say whatever part he did represent.

Then, when things were finally starting to get better, and Starscream was starting to slowly rise above the dank mire of misery he’d been entombed within, that cruelty returned. Bumblebee told him that he’d never find love again, and that he’d always be alone, and suddenly Starscream was shoved deep back down into the dark mire of his loneliness and despair. Suddenly he felt just as hopeless and empty as he had when Sentinel’s hand had been over his ember. He needed a lifeline before he sank all the way down to the bottom, so he reached out to the only light he could find in his life.

He felt guilty laying all his misery on Windblade, but at this point, doing so felt like a matter of life or death. He told her everything. He told her about how Megatron had completely changed his world, his life, and who he was. How Megatron had given his life a meaning it had never before possessed, and inspired him in a way he’d never felt before. How Megatron had given him a vision of a better world, and how he’d found himself willing to fight, and even die in the name of Megatron’s vision and ideals. He told her that he had never known true love until he’d known Megatron, and that once he had been touched by that love, it had defined him ever since.

Then he told her about Megatron’s betrayal, the betrayal he couldn’t rationalise or believe, that he still had no explanation for. The betrayal that had been followed by Megatron’s death. His beloved leader’s death, which had left him lost, empty, devoid of purpose, and utterly miserable. Now here he was, trapped in a role he never wanted, the responsibility adding to the weight of his grief, crushing him even further. He told her that he’d lost his capacity to care about anything anymore, about Cybertron, about his own continued existence. He looked at her, and told her that he just wanted something, someone, to believe in again.

Then she kissed him. He froze in surprise – he knew that she enjoyed his company, but he hadn’t had any reason to think that she returned the feelings he had developed for her. At least, not to the degree of fiery passion with which she was currently kissing him, but then, when had she ever been known to do anything without her characteristic intensity? That intensity which was now entirely focused on him, drawing him inexorably inwards towards her. Despite his initial shock, he had no intention of resisting; he submitted to the kiss, allowing her to take complete control. He wanted her to consume him in her radiance, to burn away everything about who he was now that caused him pain, so that he could rise from the ashes of his old life as something new. Her fire was a beacon giving him a new direction, and he would follow her into the flames.

**Author's Note:**

> After this I swear I'm actually gonna advance the story instead of just retelling the same events from different perspectives.
> 
> Alrighty, so I've got one more piece for this Windscream Week to go, but I won't be posting it tomorrow. It might be a little while before this next one is ready but let me assure you, it's gonna be worth the wait.


End file.
